The rattlesnake in the mailbox?

It's finally here and we don't know what to do with ourselves! We can't remember the last time we were this psyched for a season finale, though we have to be honest our balloon was just popped a bit with the revelation that we lost out on the monthly "good attitude" gift certificate to Best Buy awarded by our bosses. But anyway - Lost. We try not to get too attached to TV characters because, well, most of them suck and the few good ones can be taken away at any moment. Steven Karp from Undeclared, Michael Bluth from Arrested Development, Alfred from Batman: The Animated Series - all gone. And we have a sharp pang deep in the recesses of our stomach that tonight we could be saying goodbye to our current favorite character, Jack Shepard. Wait, you mean that annoying, straitlaced doctor? Damn right, we mean him. As we've always said, Jack is the moral compass of the show, the one person there who can always be counted on. How many people has he saved just since he's been stranded on the Island?

But we don't buy into the whole Jack-Kate (Jate?) romance angle. She made her choice, had unprotected sex with a man who has admitted to fornicating with hookers and is now jealous that Jack has made a new, super-creepy friend (Juliet). Kate seems a little too on-again, off-again for us. And for Jack. We're all kinds of nervous about what could happen tonight. Has Jack really been corrupted by the Others? Or is it his own internal struggles that have caused him to appear a bit unhinged as of late? The Jack we remember from season one never would have advocated using the women as bait, but this one does. That Jack never would have let the fact that everyone always looks to him for leadership take its toll when they need him at his most alert, but this one does.

Our question, which we pose to you is this: Is this the same Jack? We're not sure, but we'd like to think so. We always kind of wanted to believe the Island was a place of redemption, where people could be made whole again. But it's more likely a place of corruption, where people's limits are tested and their true selves revealed. We've seen what that kind of testing brought out in Michael (bad), Locke (bad), and Charlie (good). Tonight, most likely, it's Jack that will be tested. We're in your corner, Jack.